Cloud marketplaces continue to increase in popularity as the preferred way for organizations to find, try, and buy software—especially as cloud and AI needs continue to become more complex.  

The Microsoft commercial marketplace is central to how we sell alongside you, our partners, to help you reach more customers, simplify sales, and unlock growth. To support you with more ways to service your customers, Microsoft now empowers partners in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States to sell professional services through private offers in the marketplace. 

For software development companies, you often need to account for a variety of services to support your product sales. Whether that’s assisting with implementation, training your customers, or providing support over the long-term, the value of your teams’ time and resources can be accounted for directly within your marketplace sales with professional services for private offers. And, for other partners like systems integrators, managed service providers, etc., they can provide professional services (through a private offer) to support their customers who prefer the simplicity of purchasing through the marketplace.  

The value for you and your customers 

As customers shift to marketplaces to centralize their cloud portfolio, they can further simplify purchasing by streamlining software and services purchases through one platform. Customers can get your solutions while buying directly from Microsoft, and have purchases consolidated directly on their Azure invoice. As a partner, you can skip the hassle of vendor onboarding while dramatically simplifying your sales—while reaching a global market. Plus, by bundling your software and service, you decrease time-to-value for your customer.  
 

“Now that professional services are offered within the Microsoft commercial marketplace, it gives us another path to service our customers with simplified selling. And we can bundle our service and product together, helping our customers cut through procurement red tape.”  –TeamViewer 

How it works 

For partners in eligible geographies, you can now:  

sell your professional services as a standalone private offer or  
attach your professional services to a private offer alongside your software. 

Examples of professional services include: assessments, briefings, customer support, implementation, migration, proof of concepts, and workshops. These professional services are sold as private offers. You can inform your customer that the private offer is ready directly from Partner Center when you build the offer. The customer then receives an email that directs them to the Azure portal. Assuming they have proper permissions, the customer will accept and purchase the professional services private offer. With the private offer, you can also negotiate your terms and use flat-rate billing plans including upfront, monthly, or annual payments for up to three years

Any company who is part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program can sell professional services. Details are provided in our documentation, but at a high-level: 
 

Be a member of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program (it’s free to join) 
Sign the marketplace publisher agreement 
Publish your offer
Sell professional services private offers  

Get started with marketplace 

The Microsoft commercial marketplace is dedicated to helping you reach more customers, simplify sales, and unlock growth. If you’re building an application and looking to maximize marketplace success, consider joining ISV Success. Partners who join get access to free benefits, designed to help you build across the Microsoft Cloud, publish faster, and grow your partnership opportunity. Get details on how to join in the ISV Hub. 

To get started selling professional services, check out the technical documentation. 

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